4th Battalion Senior Reserves
Reminiscences of O. M. Buzhardt
Company A




   On Saturday, 9th July 1864, a company of 17 year old boys, 100 strong, left Newberry to join the Confederate service. About a dozen of the number were from Laurens, Edgefield and Lexington. Three pairs of twins helped constitute this juvenile company–Werts, Rain and Ellisor.

   The young men loitered about the station in Columbia on Sunday lest the train on which they were to be transported might come in their absence. Monday morning they promptly left Columbia for the City by the Sea where the company was marched to the Northeast bank of the Cooper River and camped in a beautiful transplanted oak grove, called Hampton Mall.

   On the first Sunday after their arrival in Charleston the Rev. John Bachman, an eminent Lutheran Minister, acquainted in Newberry, visited the camp for the purpose of holding religious services for the young soldiers. One might be impressed with the good doctor's simple manners and disinterested feelings, who said that he had closed his own church in order to minister to the young soldiers away from their homes and exposed to temptations. The doctor occupied an elegant home not very far away. He did not preach a sermon but preached in a conversational tone. He quoted the hymn, Ashamed of Jesus.

   During the winter of 1860 a disastrous fire visited the Southern part of the city and the loss had not been rebuilt four years afterwards except by fig trees and sedge grass on which the cows, to some extent, grazed.

   The enemy having despaired of capturing the city by repeating the effort during the three years, the Confederate forces that were used in the defense were transferred and used to strengthen the army in front of Richmond. The enemy kept up a desultory fire on Charleston from their battery five miles away with their shells falling upon the deserted portion of the city. The new recruits were used principally to guard Federal soldiers.

   During the Fall of 1864 and epidemic of yellow fever visited Charleston which was felt throughout the Southern Confederacy. The young soldiers from Newberry shared in the deadly epidemic and seven of their number succumbed. Dolphus Maffett, an uncle of Auditor Halfacre, was on of the number. Gen. Beauregard was in command of Charleston and his couriers, Williamson Buzhardt, Gilliam Wilson and Butler Sligh were attacked, too, and went home and died.

   During September a train load of Federal prisoners, accompanied by the Newberry soldiers as guards, were transported to Florence where there was a large stockade recently built to accommodate Union soldiers. The United States Government made medicine contraband of war which entailed much suffering and many fatalities.

   About the time Sherman captured Columbia, a part of the prisoners from the stockade with Newberry guards were forwarded to the Union authorities in North Carolina. The guards were then advanced into North Carolina and scattered by attacks of malaria. The squad that the writer accompanied spent a short while in hospitals and was then ordered to Chester from which place we were ordered to render services at Newberry. With other returning Confederate soldiers we camped in a grove near what is Mrs. Fant's residence on Glenn Street and in about two weeks we were disbanded as Confederate soldiers.

   1925

   Source:
Drayton Rutherford Chapter
U.D.C.
Newberry, S.C.

   Puvlished:
South Carolina Division
United Daughters of the Confederacy
Recollections andReminiscences 1861-1865
Volume 8
Pp. 59-60

Battalion Page <


If you have any information about these troops or these units, please email Fred (above) and/or contact me at

Bil Brasington